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Best Answer: They are , but most of them just don`t understand how it happens to them ................
Obama uses slush fund to camouflage Medicare cuts......April 25, 2012

"It's a bad idea," President Obama recently said of the Path to Prosperity budget proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis. "It will ultimately end Medicare as we know it." The trouble is, as became painfully apparent during the 2010 election, Obama's national health care law had already "ended Medicare" as millions of American seniors knew it by slashing funding for a program known as Medicare Advantage.

The last thing Obama needs is another losing fight over this in 2012, so it appears that his administration devised a way of avoiding it. According to a Government Accountability Office report published yesterday, the administration has been doling out cash from an $8 billion slush fund to temporarily cushion the blow from these cuts. The pain will come later, presumably after his re-election.

For decades, the federal government has been experimenting with the way Medicare provides health care to seniors. Most seniors still use the program's fee-for-service system, with the government billed directly by doctors and hospitals for all health received. But more than 12 million, or a quarter of all Medicare recipients, participate in Medicare Advantage, in which private insurers compete to provide services for seniors. Medicare Advantage participants pay premiums to a health insurer of their choice. The insurers also receive a subsidy from the government for each patient.

Democrats never liked this program. It was on the top of the list of things to cut when it came time to pay for Obamacare. Of the $500 billion dollars in Medicare cuts they made through 2019, $140 billion was supposed to come from reduced payments to Medicare Advantage providers. Over $6 billion in cuts were supposed to happen this year. But when you cut payments to health insurance providers, they end up cutting back on benefits, hiking premiums, or both, and those are not helpful in an election year.

Enter the Medicare Advantage Quality Bonus Payment Demonstration program, an $8.3 billion slush fund created by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Ostensibly, this fund was designed to test how best to structure bonus incentives for insurers who provided better care. Instead, it is patching up politically damaging Medicare cuts. It will alleviate 71 percent of the Medicare Advantage cuts in 2012, and then the percentage plummets in the two years after the election to 32 percent and then 16 percent.

In its report yesterday, GAO concluded that "[t]he design of the demonstration precludes a credible evaluation of its effectiveness in achieving CMS's stated research goal." According to the GAO, the $8 billion bonus program "dwarfs all other Medicare demonstrations -- both mandatory and discretionary -- conducted since 1995." Asked by the GAO to identify exactly where they got this $8 billion from, the Obama administration failed to name any specific offsets and said the spending should be considered "in the context of other administrative actions in the Medicare program."

Obama's $8 billion Medicare Advantage slush fund is a blatant attempt to stave off seniors' disapproval with Obamacare's effects in an election year. When this temporary patch runs out, millions will be shocked by skyrocketing Medicare premiums and possibly also the deterioration of care. By that time, Obama will never have to face the voters again.

Do I think an American working should be equitably paid for that work? Yes.
Do I think the employee should have as much influence during compensation negotiations as management does? Yes.
Do I think all the money, all the power, and all the political influence should be held by a "Chosen Few" who then decide whether or not they will trickle it down to the rest of us? No, I don't.
I believe capitalism works, but only when it is "Demand Side Economics". What we have had in this country for the last 35 years is "Supply Side Economics" aka "Voodoo Economics" (George HW Bush) and it obviously has not worked. You can only achieve Demand-side Economics when you pay your workers enough to be able to afford the things they are making. If no one in the economy has money to buy things with, demand for those things is not created. If you have no demand for the thing you make, you don't make that thing.
I also believe that if companies cannot produce their merchandise or services without constantly whining about "Government Over-Regulation and Too Much Oversight" then they deserve to go out of business.

By "Re-distributing Wealth", are you referring to:
Giving almost a trillion US tax dollars to save banks, which went right on foreclosing on US citizens' homes and awarding themselves multi-million dollar bonuses. Why didn't Bush give those trillions to the actual MORTGAGE HOLDERS, allowing them to STAY in their homes and pay off their houses early? Since the money was going to be spent anyway? This is how stupid and short sighted republicans are. They will pay out HUGE sums of tax payer money to corporations, but as soon a s a CITIZEN needs a hand, it's WE CANNOT AFFORD TO HELP YOU.

One is because inequality leads to a whole host of social problems like crime, teenage pregnancy, poor health and class tension

Two because it destroys social mobility, people with privileged backgrounds always have much better access to and support concerning education, career opportunities and so on and I find this fundamentally unfair.

Third because I do not believe the market fairly rewards people for the value they produce- not only are many employees paid less than the value of what they produce as a matter of definition, but also jobs that do create wealth- whether indirectly such as by the hospital cleaner contributing to save lives or directly by building goods or providing services. This is especially the case when contrasted to high paid professions that have actually destroyed wealth (bankers, who even in normal times merely manipulated prices to their advantage with no real economic consequences), or by simply acting as middle-men or non value adding advisors (real estate agents, lawyers...).

Although, then again, it cannot be done to the extreme as you still have the problem of incentive, reward, skill levels and so on.

Personally I am in favor of truly Free Market system with lots of choices, not what is dictated to me. For example Oil, a free market system would offer solar, wind and hydroelectric power.

Thinking about it, I suppose what Ms. Palin did in in Alaska with the oil profits would be considered re-distribution. She lobbied for it and now all the residents up there get a piece of the action once a year.

I wish I could get a $1,100+ check every year for just living in a State!

Only if the system has been gamed in favour of the powerful and to the detriment of others. Which it has been.
I'm interested in everyone getting an fair and even chance to gain wealth and that nobody suffers in the process because of a human construct of hierarchy. Nobody should be at a disadvantage because they were not born from the right uterous.

Anonymous · 7 years ago

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Only to the extent that those who own the largest part of the economy should be participants in that economy by creating jobs here instead of in some other country. We don't want the wealthy giving us money, we want them to give us opportunity.

Are you in favor of sequestering all the money in the economy in the 1%ers pockets?